


There's No Spark On A Dampened Floor

by shoutoutout



Category: Adventure Time
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-02
Updated: 2013-08-02
Packaged: 2017-12-22 01:43:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/907415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shoutoutout/pseuds/shoutoutout
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After 'Sky Witch' Bubblegum gets back to routine.  Well... her idea of routine.</p>
            </blockquote>





	There's No Spark On A Dampened Floor

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the song 'The Woodpile' by Frightened Rabbit

She doesn't end up sleeping for almost two days but that's for no other reason besides _things totally come up_. 

When Marceline, tired but elated and clutching Hambo, drops the princess off in the Candy Kingdom, Bubblegum offers only a small smile and wave and sends her back into the quickly disappearing night. It's then that the princess should've crawled into bed, substituting her now forgotten (or at least she'd have to _start_ forgetting) t-shirt for some other scratchy fabric, and succumb to the exhaustion stretching into her fingertips. 

Instead, she trips over Finn's leg and it stops her abruptly. "Oh Gob, _these_ doofs."

She briefly considers ditching them but dang, sleeping all piled on the floor like that looks mad uncomfortable so her face softens and she gently shakes the boy, dog, butler, and guards awake. "Hey, poops, time to get up."

"Peebs?" Finn mumbles, "What happened?" He curls up into a ball and whimpers.

Jake stretches out almost double his length and paws his eyes. "How long we've been out, Princess?" 

"Oh, you know, couple of hours. Maybe eleven… or fifteen..."

"My goodness!" Peppermint Butler exclaims. "How incredibly wasteful! I'm so sorry, Princess, I'll rectify this situation, post-haste!" He scrambles, dusting off his coattails. 

"Mmm… nah," Bubblegum waves, "It's cool." They look kind of cute, all sleepy and confused. Jake's bed-head tugs at her heart somewhere. She smiles. "I make a mean flapjack... you guys down?"

As the sun finally rises, Bubblegum finds herself amidst powdered sugar, blueberries, and pancake batter splattered along the kitchen counter. She twirls the spatula like a baton and the banana guards whoop and cheer. "Go, Princess! Go, Princess!" they all chant and Jake jumps up on the table, wiggling his booty back and forth.

"This is called the flapjack jiggle, oh yeah!" He shouts. Bubblegum giggles. 

A pile of pancakes slowly builds and the maple syrup smeared along her friends' smiles help soothe the itch deep in her stomach that flares up _Marceline, Marceline, Marceline_ whenever she dwells for even the briefest of moments.

It's tiresome, being her.

\--

By the time the sun starts to set, several calamities have been ignited and extinguished: an average day in the Candy Kingdom, more or less. The last and most time-consuming occurs when Cinnamon Bun gets himself stuck in the candy sewers. How, Bubblegum does not know, but they spend a good three hours prying him out using a mixture of corn syrup, crowbars, and a few unsavory words. Finn and Jake head home after Cinnamon Bun is free, safe albeit much more slippery than he was before, and Bubblegum finally has a second to breathe.

After a much needed shower, she pads her wet feet onto her bedroom floor. "Hmm," she buzzes, digging through her dresser drawers, searching for an appropriate replacement to the shirt she no longer owns. It stings a bit but Bubblegum ain't no baby, not like emotional Marceline who cries at basically _nothing_ , she scoffs. She knew how to sacrifice in ways Marceline would probably never understand, to deny herself the things she wanted in the name of responsibility. It's a good trait to have in a princess… a good trait to have in a _friend,_ she thinks, and a small smile plays on her face, remembering how tightly Marceline had hugged that ratty old bear. Bubblegum had given her back a piece of her childhood, probably the only real piece left, so a silly little rock shirt was really nothing at the end of the day.

Except… she panics, eyes darting around a room which now felt terribly empty, it meant a lumping _lot._

Never one to dwell, Bubblegum throws on her lab coat and slaps a pair of glasses on her face. There's always work to be done. "Yo, Science!" she calls out, feet flying down her bedroom stairs toward her lab, "Get your tiny tush down here!"

Sleep will wait.

\--

And sleep does wait, at least for that night. She wakes around noon, face flattened on the desk. She doesn't quite remember falling asleep but waking up is one of the main symptoms of slumber so it must have happened, she deduces, _had_ to have happened based on the foul chalky feeling in her mouth. Bubblegum rubs her eyes and blinks. The notes scattered across her counter are haphazard but legible. _Ah! Momentum!_ she thinks, seeing where her experiments were headed. Never one to stop science in its tracks, the princess continues on…

…for six days, it seems. At least that's what Peppermint Butler tells her, bringing down her third pizza. She trusts his perception of space and time.

"Extra pepperoni and sprinkles?" She checks, shooting him an arched eyebrow. These things are important.

"Of course, of course." He takes a timid step forward. "You know," he tries, "if you were to, say, leave this lab and come upstairs, I could have the candy chefs whip you up a true meal. One that satisfies more nutritional needs than another pizza."

"Yeah, yeah," she half-heartedly placates, already lost in another reference book. "There it is! The quantum jelly theorem! Exactly what I needed!" Her excitement is palpable.

Peppermint Butler's exit is lost in the commotion.

\--

It's on the tenth day that the momentum shifts. No longer are the answers winding their way from her mind to the board to the beaker; they're blocked. It feels like gobstoppers in her throat and she tosses her clipboard to the ground. The room spins a little but Bubblegum cocks her head to the side and smacks on her ear. "Just a little inner ear drama, that's all," she giggles to the empty room. 

She stares at her robot unsure why the reactor core won't spin the jelly compounds to a high enough velocity. The scientific method is not a perfect one, no, and Princess Bubblegum can accept with a humble dignity when mountains are simply too high to climb.

That doesn't mean she can't pitch a fit about it.

And yeah, maybe she's severely sleep deprived and maybe she smells like soggy waffle pits but dear _Glob_ kicking her half-finished robot in the shin bits feels totes amazeballs. "Take that you stinkin' stankin' --"

"Woah, woah, woah, Princess. Calm your buns."

The voice lilts through her lab. Oh. _Oh._ She dwells and the itch flares up. _Margarine, Margarine, Margar_ \- wait, no no, that's not right.

"Margarine?" Bubblegum asks, squinting towards the door.

An awkward cough. "Uh… yeah? I guess that's close enough?" The vampire floats towards her hesitantly. "You alright?"

"Oh _Marceline,_ heh heh, I remember." Her leg, still poised to kick, is lowered nonchalantly. "Whaddup?"

Marceline has an army green messenger bag strapped across her shoulder and Bubblegum can see a bit of Hambo's head peeking out. Bubblegum must be staring daggers at her or something because the incredulous look she shoots the princess is enough to bring down her castle walls. 

Marceline glides over to the princess and inspects her a little closer, almost like a specimen under glass. She knocks on her forehead. "Does anyone else know how truly donked in the head you are, Bonnie?" She sticks her tongue between fanged teeth and squints her eyes, her face hovering closer. "You're like, whacked out on mad science, aren't you?"

Bubblegum swats the cold hand away. "Thanks for barging in _my_ lab and calling _my_ science mad. I'll have you know it is mad -- mad awesome, and you clearly wouldn't understand." She feels dizzy from Marceline's closeness... or her inner ear drama bomb, either one. Probably the ear thing, she tells herself, smacking the side of her head suddenly.

"Dude," Marceline grabs her wrist and stops her, "Quit spazzing!"

Bubblegum grits her teeth, insulted. "What do you _want_ , Marceline?"

"Wow," She spits, letting go of her wrist in a huff. "You're kind of being a jerk but whatever, here." She reaches into her messenger bag and produces a tupperware container with a small note on top. In scratchy writing it says:

_Takes a good bud to get a best bud back from a real crust witch. Thanks._

Bubblegum considers it a moment. _Oh_.

"I made you a cupcake. See?" Marceline jabs at the container. Her teeth poke into her lip and she grins like a goof. 

The gobstoppers are back in her throat and Bubblegum swallows hard. It's like white hot lights go blaring off behind her eyeballs so she does what she does best: she deflects. "Thanks, Marcy. It was just a teddy bear but, ya know, thanks for this." 

As soon as the words leave her mouth she knows they are too flippant about a clearly sensitive subject but they're out there, floating around, swimming in Marceline's head, and about to smack Bubblegum in the butt.

Marceline's face hardens and her pupils turn to slits. She breathes in through her nose a little too violently, a little too angry. She explodes. "UGH! I try and do something nice and you _still_ patronize me. Hambo is important to me, ok? This is just classic Miss Perfect." Leathery wings explode from her back. 

Bubblegum takes a small step backwards but ultimately stands her ground. 

"Nothing means anything to you. It's all just logic and numbers and - and - whatever the Grod that thing is!" She points at the half-finished quantum jelly mechanized man.

"It's my half-finished quantum jelly mechanized man," Bubblegum offers simply.

" _See?!_ You can't understand why maybe, just maybe, an object might be more than an object. Maybe certain things mean more than just their parts, like, maybe the sum of their parts add up to something really, really big. I wish you could just get that and stop making me feel so bad about it!" Her chest heaves and the fur that's sprouted on her back stands up straight. "I'm trying to be nice, you psycho!"

Bubblegum knows she's right, knows how easily she gets lost in the numbers and her principles, but hot gum, this is like the one time Marceline is so off base that she just can't let it slide. Her hands twist into fists. "Do you even know how I got Hambo back? Do you? No, you don't, cause you're a big butt and you assume I don't know all the things you're talking about. Maybe I had to trade Maja something for your bear. Maybe it was something I care so lumping much about that it was worthy enough to trade. Maybe it was -- " she starts to choke. Those gobstoppers again. "Maybe it was literally the most important thing I've ever owned and now I'm up all night, every night, in this lab that reeks of my own stinkin' brown mist, distracting myself because I'm too scared to realize it's really gone." 

She snaps her mouth shut about ten seconds too late. She's let it slip. Oh, _gumballs._

"Oh… ok." Marceline looks about three sizes smaller. A red burn rushes to her blue cheeks. She offers a small smirk and it's like a white flag of peace. It waves hot in Bubblegum's face. "Ugh," Marceline huffs and there's almost a laugh in her tone, "Why does everything have to turn so drama dense so quickly?"

Bubblegum cocks her head. She feels like she's walking a tightrope, waiting to see which way Marceline's wind will blow, waiting to see if she'll go careening over the edge. It scares the gum out of her but she can't help a snarky, "Um, because you overreact _all the time_?" 

Marceline pouts and chews her bottom lip. "Well.. you should have just told me you had to trade her. _Duh._ Crisis averted. What was it? Maybe I could make it up to you?"

Blood rushes in Bubblegum's ears and everything turns red, red, red. A thousand words trample over each other: words she's said only to herself, in the deep hours of night when it's just her and the safety of her isolation. Never out loud. Never where they'd interfere with her duties. Never.

She scans Marceline's expectant face and it would be so easy to lay it all out but -- 

"I - um - my googoomama meter. I traded it for Hambo. It meant a lot to me. It was one of my first inventions." _Lies._ They feel so natural rolling off her tongue. "Sorry for freaking out, I really haven't slept. I probably need to."

Marceline eyes her warily. She scrunches up her face, supposedly trying to read her explanation. Bubblegum sees something flash in her eyes like a spark of understanding, maybe quiet pity. It leaves her unsettled and her heart pounds out of sync. 

"Sorry you had to do that, Princess," she offers, voice strangely nonchalant. "I obviously can't make you another googoo whatever-ometer but maybe me and Hambo could make you more cupcakes sometime?" Marceline places her hand over the tupperware, fingers brushing against Bubblegum's. It's like she's waving her down a runway, all lights pointing towards _exit here, exit here._ She's giving her a way out.

Bubblegum swallows a gasp of cold air that feels like nothing but relief. "Yeah, yeah, thanks. That would be awesome."

They both smile and, for the first time in days, Princess Bubblegum feels at ease.

"Um," Marceline shuffles awkwardly, "Maybe I could help you upstairs? You definitely need some sleep and your toes have been bleeding through your little sockies this whole time. Check it," she points down and sure enough there's a deep purple splotch seeping through.

"Oh… yeah… I was kicking that thing, wasn't I?"

Marceline laughs. "Yeah, like some poo-brained weirdo."

Nothing's really changed and nothing's been solved but maybe they understand each other a little better. Or maybe not but still, as Marceline helps her up the stairs Bubblegum can't help but think, _Ah! Momentum!_

And she's never been one to get in the way of science.


End file.
